First of all, let me tell you how happy I am that GMMTV finally chose to do a GL. When the news first dropped, I was excited. When I heard that Milk and Love would be taking the main roles, I was over the moon. Sadly, though, the actual series has me a lot less thrilled than the idea did...

I absolutely adored Milk and Love in Bad Buddy. Their chemistry was great, they were adorable, and their acting was nice too. However, I cannot get myself to feel the same way about them in this show, sadly. I think these two excel at portraying a crush, but not an actual relationship, if that makes sense. Their chemistry is perfectly fine when all they have to do is give each other sweet looks and subtle touches. However, when it comes to actual physical chemistry beyond that, everything somehow evaporates, and not much is left. Their kiss scenes felt incredibly forced to me, like they got dared to kiss during a game of truth or dare or something. The scene where Sun's towel fell down and Ongsa started screaming made me want to crawl out of my skin because it felt so awkward and uncomfortable. Honestly, Ongsa kind of reads as asexual to me, which would've been nice representation. Like she is in love with Sun and wants to be with her, but has no interest in anything physical. And even if they didn't go for that idea, they could've just not included any kiss scenes either way since it's a high school romance, and those don't really need kiss scenes in my opinion. I much prefer no kiss scenes to these awkward moments that end up ruining the chemistry for me.

Because of that, I will always choose to rewatch Bad Buddy if I need my fix of MilkLove, instead of this heap of awkwardness.

But my biggest gripe with this show is how boring and dragged out it feels. It has almost no plot, which I don't generally mind if there's great characters and great chemistry. My School President didn't exactly have the most exhilarating plot either, but it still ended up as one of my favorite shows because of the amazing chemistry and the lovable characters. But this show didn't have much of either (at least not in my opinion). The nonexistent plot really made it a slog to get through, and I found myself fast-forwarding quite a lot after the first half of the show. The only thing it had going for it was the catfish storyline. But that was resolved in a very unsatisfying way (Sun was mad for 0.2 seconds, which was not enough at all) and then, everything kind of faded into nothingness. They started inserting drama for drama's sake in the later episodes - like the studying abroad and the outing thing. But the conflicts felt so shoehorned in and unnatural that it wasn't exciting to watch, it just made me roll my eyes. Let me say it again... Don't write conflict if you aren't going to resolve it in a meaningful way.
So, this just ends up being yet another one of those GMMTV shows that should've been 6 solid episodes instead of 12 that feel bloated with nonsense and side characters that get only a few scenes, which is not enough to flesh them out at all, so their storylines feel unsatisfying. Alpha, for example, was a really compelling character that never got quite enough screen time to really do the idea of her justice.

As far as the main characters go, I think Ongsa is developed decently well (at least for GMMTV standard). Sun on the other hand is lacking the screen time it would take to actually flesh her out beyond being sweet, trusting and kind. I would say her character gets ruined in episode 10, when she outs not only Ongsa but also Aylin and Luna in front of Ongsa's family, but there isn't much of a character there to begin with, so it can't really be ruined. But either way, that scene made me absolutely despise her. You don't out anyone ever, there's no room for discussion there. But especially not when it was super obvious how uncomfortable Ongsa was with the situation, even trying to deny the whole thing.

I want to praise GMM for having made the decision to replace North and Night with an actual GL pairing as the side couple. Obviously, I would've loved to see Gemini and Fourth in this, but I much prefer it to actually give those roles to girls instead. Give the girlies their time to shine when we have so many BLs already. Luna's and Aylin's storyline is much more interesting than the main romance. However, I couldn't help but scream "THIS GIRL NEEDS THERAPY!" at my computer whenever Aylin was on screen. Clearly, she has severe mental health struggles that are very reminiscent of autism-spectrum disorders or perhaps even schizophrenia with her conviction of being an alien. At best it's a really unhealthy coping mechanism, but either way, her family not actually getting her any help hurts my heart. She really needs a professional at her side, and I really really hope that this will still happen in the two remaining episodes. But knowing GMM shows, I doubt it.

The humour of this series did not land with me at all. It reminded me a lot of Japanese shows - very over the top, outright cringe in many instances, and clashing with the heavy moments of the show. This is just down to personal preference though, so while I don't vibe with that kind of thing, other people might.

All in all, this was a big disappointment for me. I think other people might really enjoy it, but it just wasn't for me. I'm very happy to see GMMTV actually trying their hand at GL, which is why I'm actually glad that other people seem to really enjoy this. Because the more support this show gets, the more likely it is that we will get more GLs in the future - which we desperately need! So I would honestly suggest you give this a try, even if it hasn't been an enjoyable experience for me. Hopefully in the future, we'll see GLs with better plot lines and chemistry. Until then, I will just rewatch Bad Buddy again whenever I'm in need of a cute GL couple.